Reflecting on Death Stranding

Written in 2020

This is Norman Reedus. There are many like him, but this one is mine.

Norman Reedus is my best friend. He is my life. I must master him as I must master my life.

Without me, Norman Reedus is useless. Without Norman Reedus, I am useless. I must navigate Norman Reedus true. I must navigate straighter than my enemy who is trying to catch me. I must navigate past him before he catches me. I will ...

Norman Reedus and I know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the journey that counts. We will journey...

Norman Reedus is human, even as I, because he is my life. Thus, I will learn him as a brother. I will learn his weaknesses, his strength, his parts, his accessories, his sights and his bb. I will keep Norman Reedus clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will ...

Before God, I swear this creed. Norman Reedus and I are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!

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Honestly though, in some ways I think this game and Breath of the Wild are two separate solutions to the same design problem. Both developers recognized the stagnant nature of open world games and sought to change the player’s incentive on a fundamental level. Where Breath of the Wild incentivized exploration in terms of getting from point A to whatever you define as your own point B, Death Stranding incentivized exploration in terms of how you get from point A to point B. The challenge of Death Stranding is the traversal itself, and I completely understand why it receives criticisms of being a walking simulator. It is a walking simulator by design, that is its strength. It’s a beautiful game, not only in that its message to the player could not be more poignant in 2020, but also in how it ‘gameafies’ every last morsel of interaction, from how you converse with individuals, and how you load out your character, to how you choose a path, and how you choose to press on... despite the odds. Leading up to Breath of the Wild, it felt like a lot of games were going open world just because they could. Many complained about the ‘ubisoft-ification’ of the genre. Series like Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption took the open world genre to its natural conclusion. Death Stranding shows that the genre still has a lot to offer.